Kathryn
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
Below are the 9 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Kathryn" journal:
|
11:10 am
[Link] |
The Popular Monsters
My brother, ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) daspatrick, is a . . . well, let's just say he's a ridiculously cool individual. I have a whole set of anecdote fragments that I tell to try and convey to people how cool he is without monopolizing the conversation, including the fact that he drove across Asia in a tiny car, that when he was 17 we had UWTV on pretty much constantly because they had a feed from MIR and he had a crush on one of the cosmonauts, that he makes movies sometimes. . . and that he's in a band, the Popular Monsters.
Now, first of all, let's ignore the fact that I have the MySpace page up to link to it, and it started playing Turtle Rock and Lily FREAKED OUT with joy and began to dance wildly while wearing Erik's hiking boots, and how cute that must be. (although I tell you, it's pretty damn cute.) Patrick does most of the songwriting for the band, and as someone who's always fancied herself to be moderately musically talented, it drives me to sick jealousy that he is as good a songwriter as he is. Liberty Lake is a really good encapsulation of that weird period in a group of friends' lives where everything is kind of awesome but it's becoming brutally clear that something's going to change pretty soon; No Love for Plants and Cats is a sweet, sad eulogy for a relationship that ended not with a bang, but with a whimper.
So, anyway, hit the MySpace page and give them a listen, will ya? Maybe then you can realize the Coolness that Is My Brother too.
Tags: family, music, patrick
|
|
11:35 pm
[Link] |
A Very Musical Weekend
There was a fair amount of visiting yesterday; we visited my father-in-law's friend Dwight, who is housesitting while my FIL and his wife are in Hawaii, and then we visited Erik's grandfather in the dementia care facility to show him our wedding pictures. Then we visited wrog and emmacrew, and Emma told us the story of the Ring Cycle while Roger played us the various leitmotifs on the piano. It was delightful, and dead cool, even though the Wagnerian goodness of it all was occasionally interrupted by the "BONK! WOOPWOOPWOOP!" noises of one of Philip's toys. Then we went to see daspatrick's band Xander at the Blue Moon, which ROCKED LIKE A ROCKING THING THAT ROCKS A LOT. I'm completely biased here; Patrick is my brother, and I see everything regarding him through sibling-colored glasses, but he's a really good bassist and a really good songwriter, and is quite the enjoyable performer. At one point, they were playing a song a lot of people knew the words too ("Laika". . . the chorus goes "Good dog, Laika come home") and we were all dancing and singing along, and I caught Patrick's eye and he looked back at me with this look like "This is pretty fukn awesome, this right here." And you know what? It was.
Then TODAY we had the first of the Ring Cycle operas, Das Rheingold, two and a half hours with no intermission. It rizzocked the hizzouse. I mean, there are mermaids swimming in air, an evil dwarf, and Loki throwing fire around, what's not to love?! I wasn't super thrilled with the tenor singing Loge, but I'm not necessarily overly fond of tenors to begin with. Wotan was very good, and Stephanie Blythe as Fricke was fan-fucking-tastic. The sets were jawdroppingly beautiful -- leenerella, tell Luke that we spontaneously gasped and applauded when the forest set came on. We are way the hell up in the cheap seats (where "cheap" == "$500 for both of us to see all four operas"), and I think we might invest in some opera glasses before tomorrow, but there really isn't a bad seat in this house. It was incredible, as good as I could have dreamed. I'm very excited about the rest of them. I am starting to see why people are such wicked hott Wagner fans.
Current Music: Neutral Carrier Hotel -- Xander
Tags: music, patrick
|
|
09:16 am
[Link] |
Carl Zeiss
My brother Patrick got his wisdom teeth taken out yesterday. All four of them. Under local anaesthetic only. You must understand, our father is BRITISH, and we have a history of some fairly fucked-up teeth, so this is even braver than it sounds.
Patrick wrote me of his experience, and graciously gave me permission to quote him here. He reads my journal, though he doesn't have an account, so if you comment here, he'll probably see it.
A short way into the surgery, I notice that magnifying lenses swivel mounted onto Dr. Swanson's glasses say "Carl Zeiss" around the small lenses. They look like tiny binoculars mounted to the bridge of the glasses frames, and they come down to obscure my Dentist's eyes everytime he must do something particularly delicate or challenging. I try to focus on the lens manufacturer's name and take comfort in the precision and quality such a moniker represents.
( Read more... )
Tags: patrick, writing
|
|
05:44 pm
[Link] |
What's up on the needles
I took a break from Endless Socks to make a baby sweater for a friend of mine who's due in March. (The sweater isn't actually for her, of course, it's for the parasite-like creature developing inside her.) It's nowhere near done yet, I've just finished the body and picked up for the neck band, but I thought maybe I'd post a picture anyway.
( so cute you could just eat it. )
Dale Baby Ull, knit on 3.25mm (US3) needles, ribbing and neckband on 2.25 mm (US1) needles.
Tags: knitting, patrick
|
|
04:21 pm
[Link] |
My brother has beaten me for Best British Street Sign.
Mine was "CAUTION: Oncoming Traffic in Middle of Road."
Patrick's is "Traffic Signal Modified in Accordance with Pedestrian Fatality Mitigation Act." He wins.
Tags: patrick
|
|
09:38 pm
[Link] |
For everyone who's a big fan of my brother
I include here his travel journal (still incomplete as yet) from his recent trip to England.
Go read it. He's funny.
Tags: patrick
|
|
10:39 am
[Link] |
A List of People Not to Fuck With
The Navy SEALs.
Catholic Schoolgirls.
The New York Subway System.
Tags: patrick
|
|
12:45 am
[Link] |
God I have been meaning to post this FOREVER.
But I lost it. Good thing annathepiper found it again. It's an email from my brother, responding to my answer to the question "will you make it to this event today."
> Kathryn sez:
> > Whether I will be there or not depends _entirely_ on how much oomph it will
> > take to get my parents to Shilshole to pick up their boat.
>
> This is a question for physics to answer! According to yahoo maps, the
> distance from Bothell to Shilshole is 15.3 miles, or 24.6 km. If you
> assume that the parents are launched at 45 degrees, and failing to take
> into account wind resistance or the curvature of the earth, the parents
> will have a horizontal position of 2^(1/2) * vi * t and a vertical
> position of 2^(1/2) * vi * (t - (9.8/2)t^2) at any time 't' and launched
> with initial velocity vi. For the parents to strike the ground 24600
> meters away in Shilshole, you can solve for vi and get vi =~ 490 m /sec.
> Their journey will take a little over 70 seconds.
>
> Assuming that by 'oomph' you mean 'kinetic energy', which is equal to .5 *
> mass * v^2, and also assuming that our parents combined mass is (rather
> optimistically) 100kg, this means that you must provide 12 Mega-Joules of
> 'oomph' to get them to shilshole.
>
> So Kate, Is that too much for you to come to the jam session?
>
> P
>
Tags: funny kathryn stories, patrick
|
|
01:58 am
[Link] |
MAN OR ASTROMAN
Did Christmas shopping all day. Then, met up with my brother and Paul to go see Man or Astroman at the Graceland. We went to pho beforehand (mmmmm, pho) and got to the venue about 20 minutes before the doors opened. Then we stood around in the rain and waited.
Got inside, checked our coats (mmmm, coat check girl), and settled down with drinks. Man, the place is a good old fashioned dive. Sticky floors, too-loud sound system, nice strong drinks, the works.
We went in to see the show when we realized one of the opening bands was already playing. Erk! The very opening band was called Pattern, and while they were pretty run-of-the-mill and all their songs sounded the same, they were very capable. Plus the singer wanted to be the lead singer for the Black Crowes more than anyone else I've ever seen.
The next opening band was Zero Zero, and I actually didn't like them as much. But they had this very very very sexy mod keyboard chick, and watching her made up for some of it.
Then MAN OR ASTROMAN! Jesus H these guys rock. I have it on good authority that the roof is, in fact, noticeably higher than it was before. They're like computer surf-punk, their lead vocals are computer generated, they have a song played by an Apple EasyWriter dot-matrix printer (the song is called "Simple Text File") and, at the end, a Homemade Toroidal Vandegraff Generator which happily threw purple sparks in all directions. When they announced that one of their songs was about particle accelerators, Patrick and I screamed and hollered and Patrick yelled "Represent!" (Our dad works with particle accelerators for a living.)
It was great. Then Erik, being a total sweetheart, came and picked me up. I reek of cigarette smoke, I think I'm actually on a nic buzz for the first time in years, just because of the proximity. Man I had such a good time. And Paul bought me a t-shirt!
Current Mood:  ecstatic
Current Music: Man or Astroman
Tags: friends, music, patrick
|
|
